What Death has Touched
by xXxVioletSkyxXx
Summary: Lily and James Potter died today. Snape was abandoned, his soul collected today. Harry was orphaned, Sirius imprisoned; Peter betrayed his friends today. And then tomorrow Hagrid, slowly, to take the child away. A melancholy chronological account of the most untimely deaths of Hallow's Eve- of Godric's Hollow the night the world came to an end.
1. Chapter One

Lily and James Potter died today.

Snape was abandoned, his soul collected today.

Harry was orphaned, Sirius imprisoned; Peter betrayed his friends today.

And then tomorrow Hagrid, slowly, to take the child away.

A melancholy chronological account of the most untimely deaths of Hallow's Eve 1981- of Godric's Hollow the night the world came to an end.

_Chapter One_

_..._

It's empty, this street in front of me.

No cars, no people- no movement. It's long since past sunset in early November and the streetlights cast an eerie glow over the wet pavement, a breathy wind fills the lungs of the empty street and the wind chimes of Number 17, rustles the bed sheet hiding a ghost at the window of Number 3. A gently waning moon hangs like a chandelier in a ceiling full of a stars.

It was quiet, that of the peculiar sort, like the electricity had been lost and a city was caught mid-scream, confused and perhaps a little frightened; huddled together in packs to guard themselves from the resounding darkness. But there was no noise there- no sound. Not then. Not on the night that the world came to an end.

But there was something odd happening in Godric's Hollow that night. Something strange, something mysterious. Something that's never been fully explained or even understood.

There were two deaths first, noise then, surely, before all this silence. Twelve soon to come- one orphan. A long-lost best friend first, a half giant next and a godfather with an itch in his heart taking up the back. Three visitors, three witnesses. Three viewers of the dead, of the orphan that night.

Their death was primal. It'd happened before, and it'll happen again. And it will always happen exactly when you think that it can't.

But it's too late for that now- all the Muggle alarms have come too late. It was a war after all, and in war you guard your own before anyone else's. The world was soaked in a Death Eater mentality, in Slytherin-esque ambition- you just didn't know who your neighbour could be, who was controlling them from behind the curtain, out of sight. It was too much to ask for Muggle witnesses that night, for video footage. But remember that it's the middle of the night, and things like that don't happen here. Not in public. Not where a cleverly placed Disillusionment charm can't hide the obvious.

Despite the bad, the worse, and the inexplicable, lets have a healthy dose of reality, shall we? A sense of normality amongst these strangers on either side.

Even though there _was_ a Fidelius-shaped hole between Number 17 and Number 19 on the west side of Godric's Hollow, one thing the street did have was houses. Loads of them. But they're grey, empty looking. Stone and wood, mostly; faded by the wear of time. They line the street east and west, with the back gardens facing the full moon on a night like tonight. Looking around, it's easy to see that they're abandoned, even though they shouldn't be. Not with the economy the way it is. Not with it being November first and the day after Hallowe'en.

Surely one house still has sweets on the front porch. Surely there are still pirates and fairies and television heroes walking the streets with heavy pillow cases slung over their shoulders.

Surely one person had seen it. Heard the piercing screams without perforated hiccup-y laughter following in its wake. But this wasn't a haunted house- there was no puppet master hiding in the doorway. Death had been here, and where he's been, dead men follow.

Due north and south (for this was a practical sort of neighbourhood, wizard or no) was full of vacant houses with vacant expressions: windows without pupils, railings without arms supporting them, beers in hand. Doorbells to ring with no one left to answer them.

The flowers are all wilted by now, this late in the year- brown and crawling and dead. Begonias and lilies and ivy racing up the walls of every house, all missing the essential limb for the final ascent; a leg, an arm. A punched out window, the cracked concrete of a long-since haphazard walk.

(The nature of the dead is dead anticipation, after all.) The sort that leaves you stranded at the end of a sentence with adjectives and dying words hanging out of your mouth.

The lamps flicker, even though it's ten past one and the day after Hallowe'en. It was too early for it to be that quiet.

Anyone with a spine is too drunk to be asleep, having too much fun to notice a house that is a little too bomb-stricken to be fake.

You know the one. Number 18.

That young couple with a baby boy, hidden out of sight for four months and counting. That house that disappeared from sight almost a week ago, invisible by a Fidelius charm- the cottage across from the church in the middle of Godric's Hollow.

...

The house closest is attached to a split telephone pole in its own state of disarray. Once tall and strong it developed a hunch. Split vertebrae, a cracked neck. A broken addition to the flickering fate of Godric's Hollow.

I guess it's unpicturesque to mention the crack house around the corner, or the hovel on Number 12. This is a neighbourhood of a generation long gone; you'll hear no childish laughter or the screech of bicycles here. No buzzing of teenagers at the corner store, flipping through magazines and newspapers. No housewives pushing prams on the sidewalk, their children playing hopscotch on the street, buying ice lollies from ice cream vans.

Not since Lily and James died.

But they don't know it yet, do they? They don't understand. These people, the neighbours- sleeping in all those ghost houses on either side. Numbers 17 and 19 haven't bothered to check, they don't yet know that the world is over.

They don't know that those are bodies left on the stairway, in the nursery. Dead parents of lost generation, leaving behind a baby, a particularly unlucky orphan.

I turned my head to the unwelcome crack of Apparation.

There's a Death Eater standing there, silent and still characteristically dressed in black robes and serpent tattoos.

The crack disturbed the peace, not to mention the wind chimes, suddenly in possession of new purpose and clumsy noise. But this man brings grief-stricken silence with him- like a bomb before it detonates, but the shrapnel from that sort of wound cuts far deeper than the skin. It's the sort that can pierce a heart.

This man had assisted in a murder, it's no wonder he clutched his wand like his very life depends on it. No wonder he was sobbing long before he reached the door.

I shook my head, and when Severus Snape passed me, I followed.

...

Yes. A Death Eater, if I recall. That's what I saw, there was no man underneath those robes, how could there be?

But the first thing he did once he saw it, saw Bursberry Cottage in ruins, was drop his wand. Abandon his courage, but yet he had the bravery to move.

To limp inside, feigning, perhaps, praise towards his master, towards Voldemort- the potential murderer of that last thing he loved. If he opened that house, unlocked the doors, he would know.

Was Lily dead? Was she already gone?

What of the boy?

He knew about the prophesy, of course. In the Hogs Head he heard it, clear as day. The Dark Lord was always one step ahead and two miles behind.

...

The house shimmered into being, a secret had been told. And when it opened, something inside him cracked.

Those robes fell to the ground. The house was in pieces.

The welcome mat was smoking, the door left open, but not harmed. A pair of wands were left abandoned on the sofa, the entertainment of a boy- a son, long forgotten.

The staircase was worse.

The framed photos lining the wall were all shattered, twenty-one years of Potters and Evans and Marauders torn from their frames. Snape had to step over the broken glass, jagged stairs and James Potter to reach the nursery.

...

He was still warm.

His glasses had fallen off of his nose. His hair, still messy and disheveled was black as night, black as Snape's. There was a pacifier in his back pocket. Stains on his shirt and trousers. Nothing but death in his eyes, in his body and in his heart.

He looked harmless in death, but Snape didn't bother to kick to corpse when he passed. Dead anticipation after all, Snape knew better.

And by his hand, a wand-less and defenceless hand, a man was dead. Killed by the power of words, the unadulterated force of rumours and suspicions. Voldemort had been here- looked him in the eye and killed the spare: the first barrier to Lily Potter's son.

...

The hall was bomb stricken.

A bomb truly had exploded, the ruins of the house stood in piles, in pieces. The carpet was laden with scorch marks, burns that cut through solid wood, windows into the rooms below.

It was easier, I think, for Snape to look down. To see the kitchen and the foyer and the bathroom with the lights still on. People could've lived down there, there was a family who once had.

So Snape swallowed, shook off the remainder of a Death Eater facade, settled into his eleven year old self for the first time in ten years. Braced himself for the landing, for something much worse than the death of an enemy.

He stood his ground as he walked, but once, then twice he faltered, but not in body. His spirt was on the road to destruction, his heart thumping madly in his chest, enchained by his ribs- threatening to escape.

There was a mental shut down. Black screen with black words. Reboot. Reboot. Restart. This was no time for a broken heart, son; you didn't know anything yet.

(But don't close your eyes, Severus, you had brought this upon yourself)

He had known what was coming when he heard the screams from three hundred miles away.

He groped blindly for the railing as his knees buckled, as the lights blinked and the moon shone, as the carpet cracked and the nursery came into full light.

As he saw the arm of a dead woman lying on the floor.

Snape's left knee buckled as he slammed into the wall, his heart tumbling onto the floor. As he saw red hair and a vacant green-eyed stare, eyes, a body, lips he hadn't seen in far too long.

Nothing but death in her body, in her eyes and in her heart.

She was draped over the cot, the child silent, crying for his mother, for a parent, for the child was now most certainly an orphan. A cut was still bleeding, jagged and red in the middle of the boys forehead. Droplets of blood dripped down the boys face.

Lily was cold.

Her eyes were open, wide in shock, wreathed in tears and black streaks of burns and soot. Her hair was knotted, curled like an angels even in death, her body tense and so terribly still.

Snape took her hand and held her, cradled her broken body in his, as if to protect her from the inevitability of death, of the mistakes he had made that had separated them so long ago. He pulled her closer and tucked his face into her hair, sobbing openly now, so terribly, terribly remorseful that he could barely see, hardly think past the ache of the hole in his heart. Of the hopeless longing that was gone now because of him.

Of the family, the family, the Potter's spawn with his Lily, the child that should've been dead, killed by the Dark Lord who had most certainly been here. He should've been dead.

And Lily could've lived.

Her dying scream echoed in the empty room as the child thrashed and Snape sobbed, as the moon shone, and the house bent, as a heart changed and a soul became redeemed.

As the remnants of a broken heart and a shattered soul intermingled with that of the dead, of a fate worse than death lying dead in his arms.

...

Snape left her be once he heard the door creak. Whether it was the Dark Lord or a Muggle, it didn't matter. He couldn't be seen- couldn't be seen, couldn't be left alone any longer.

He Dissapparated immediately, almost splinching himself in the process, his mind was in rambles. But it was fitting, I think and you should also, that he did indeed leave a bit of himself in that place- in that room with an orphan and a dead lover. But not as Voldemort had, not a piece of a soul.

It was split enough without magical aid. It was a human ailment, a Muggle condition- his broken heart. No amount of love could heal him now, part of himself had died with her.

So when he left he almost took her with him. But it would've been suspicious, raised questions. The child might remember, and the Dark Lord would never forget. And Snape would be dead in minutes, disobedience is death and death would be sore solace for what he deserved.

Snape turned and with a final, sharp crack the air bent and he disappeared. The child in cot sobbed and reached for his mother, his fist inches from her hair. Still warm, even now. Warm from an old friend, borrowed from a broken heart. But death is death and the price is still far too steep. Love that deep to save a child so loved, so loved that no matter of darkness could kill him now.

He was a survivor, if nothing else- and Harry Potter would take that to the grave.


	2. Chapter Two

The clock ticks its way past midnight- It's now November second.

The decorations of Halloween long gone remain, dancing skeletons, white gauze and plastic spiders hanging from the trees. Disembodied smiles lingered in the doorways, pumpkins grinning and laughing like they know the secret that no one else does. They're the ones who saw Voldemort that night, those smiles are more than a gruesome slash of a mouth, they have a story to tell. They had seen Snape and would soon see others. They stood waiting before Sirius Black came rumbling in from the sky on a motorbike, half-delirious with fear and anticipation. They were the ones who danced for him that night, the ones who smiled and waited for the conclusion to come about after all this time.

The stage has been reset. It is no longer the night it once was, the world is not bathed in the colours of destruction- there was no desolation today. In fact, there was happiness. rejoicing- even in the hours following Voldemort's apparent demise, word was spreading. Joy ran rampant with the absence of sadness because not many knew of what had happened- what the price of Voldemort's death truly was. Nobody knew that Lily and James Potter had to die for Voldemort to be vanquished once and for all.

For most, in those hours after he was killed, life was good. A notorious villain had been killed and the world as they knew it was at peace once more. But Dumbledore knew better: he had understood what had happened when his wand shook in the middle of the night, when he had the good sense to alert Hagrid, to collect the child. To not listen to the drunken stories of the innkeepers when they rejoiced at the very idea that Voldemort could be dead.

Every victory comes with a price, a human cost, and on that day, at that time, it happened to be Lily and James Potter on the chopping block. The repercussions from the murders that shook their world and broke their hope. Their now orphaned son was left lying alone and afraid in his cot, abandoned in childhood and desperate for a home.

Hagrid was awoken by Dumbledore just after one o'clock that morning, and left immediately for Godric's Hollow unaware of what he would find there.

So running off of technicalities alone, it was Hagrid who got there second.

He Floo'd from Dumbledore's office into Bathilda Bagshot's flat (deaf as she was, Hagrid didn't expect her to notice, and in fact invited her absence. Dumbledore had warned him specifically, the news was to be secret until more facts were uncovered.) All went according to plan: he stumbled onto her hearth rug and stood silent for a minute or two until he was certain that the old woman wouldn't wake. He opened the door to a rush of cold air, leaves whipping around corners and empty trees bowing in the wind. The street was quiet, the world was silent. According to his pocket watch, it was a little after one thirty in the morning.

It was he who crossed the street, saw the house he had only heard of in hushed conversation. He, who knocked open the door Snape had so carefully closed and stumbled over the steps in his haste to see the facts for himself. He who walked around some blasted furniture (an armchair, a kitchen stool) and kicked the rest aside to gain access to the rest of the house.

It was he who saw the door, the hall. And on the first stairs blocking the staircase he saw the carefully cooled corpse.

...

Hagrid stopped dead, the stark reality of what he was sent to do finally made sense.

Even with the absence of the Dark Mark hovering above the house, he knew at once that Voldemort had been here.

Before him lied the body of a boy he had grown to love, a man he was certain would do amazing things one day. Another father who had died before his time and who's absence ripped a hole in his family. Dead with his eyes open, James Potter lay motionless and cold on the staircase.

Hagrid fell to his knees in front of him, tears choking his voice and blurring his eyes. This man was dead. James Potter, a husband, a father, a best-mate was gone- killed in the line of fire long before his time.

He was gone.

Hagrid stumbled to his feet and took James in his arms, lying him carefully and quietly onto the floor in front of the stair. In his haste, his glasses crunched underneath of Hagrid's boots, but it hardly mattered. He wouldn't need them anymore.

Hagrid sniffed loudly and wiped his eyes on his sleeves. Tears ran in torrents down his cheeks and he grasped firmly onto the stairs, one after another in his haste to find some remnant of life in this dead house. To find their son, Harry, and bring him to Dumbledore alive. It was his mission, he had a job to do.

In a fit of rage, Hagrid ripped past James' body and tore up the stairs, hell-bent on discovering the killer before he reached Lily, who was inevitably upstairs. Hagrid stepped over the same debris that Snape had before him, the precarious hall with its rips and tears into the rooms below. He looked forward though, his eyes soggy with tears and heart bursting with pain. He didn't want to walk forward, but he did anyways. Loud, blubbering sobs came from him then, and they quickly overwhelmed him. Dumbledore hadn't told him what he would find at this address, hadn't clued him in on who he would find there.

He didn't want to find Lily dead, he wasn't sure if he would survive if she was gone too. Even if he simply tolerated James Potter when he was at Hogwarts- Hagrid was certain he loved Lily. She was the one who had ridden with Hagrid on her first boat ride across the lake, sat at his feet with her hands on her knees because all of the other boats were full. She was the one who revolutionized the way her friends and her house saw Muggleborns, changed her fate in her own way and lived her life in a perpetual balance between family and friends, between purity of blood and purity of heart. That was the Lily that Hagrid knew, but the only one that her son would remember would be dead before he ever knew her.

All the bravery he had once had escaped him, and Hagrid bent at the waist, bracing his hand on the door before him. He was afraid. He wasn't sure if he could stand it to see another child dead. He wasn't positive that he could fulfill his mission when every piece of him wanted to run, wanted to escape without the answers, without a resolution. But he had to rescue the boy, save him from an untimely death.

He hadn't come tonight expecting death.

He hadn't come anticipating destruction.

In his wildest dreams, he hadn't expected this: but was Hagrid alone who crossed the hall without stopping, without hesitating. He alone was second in that unlikely trio who had the courage to open the door to the nursery without knocking first.

He gently pushed the door open, the hinges creaking, glass breaking underneath his boots.

He saw a nursery in ruins- furniture had once barricaded the door and he pushed it aside to enter. Lamps were broken and dust had settled everywhere. Above him, the roof was beginning to cave in, a blast zone that had started and ended here.

Lily Potter, slumped before her son's cot, lay cold and scared and dead.

Hagrid stared at her in shock, her red hair was knotted and covered in ash, her face tight with emotion. Dead with her eyes open, Lily Potter lay silently on the ground.

His shifting weight caused the house to groan, and debris shifted before him. He made a mad dash for the cot and Lily, dragging both towards him, towards the safety of the open door before further damage could be done. As he did so, just as he secured the two of them behind him, a section of the nursery collapsed and fell to the first floor.

Hagrid didn't want to look into the cot, but did anyways and took the child in his arms. He was small, so tiny and fragile. A cut on his forehead bled freely down his face- but the baby was motionless.

Hagrid recovered the cot from it's precarious position, righted it with the child held in his arm, his dead mother repositioned away from danger, away from the debris.

The boy was pale and cold, and Hagrid sat for many minutes with him, his whiskery cheek held to Harry's tiny torso, listening desperately for any whisper of a heart beat; for a pulse of life in this house full of destruction. He remained a lone survivor amongst the dead, the first of his many brushings with death.

At long last, Harry coughed, and then began crying in earnest.

Hagrid could've cried in relief- he pulled the baby closer to him and cradled him carefully. He was a miracle- the boy was alive. He had survived.

Hagrid wondered if Harry knew that his parents were dead.

He wondered if he knew that his parents would never again come soothe him.

He wondered if he understood what had happened.

But most of all, he wondered if Harry knew that his mother and father had been dead for hours, and now Harry was alone.

Harry's cut burned red onto Hagrid's cheek and once he had wiped away the blood, the stark reality hit him square on: this child was an orphan, abandoned, alone. Just like him.

The boy's fate so uncertain now that his parents were dead and the war was over and it finally looked like Voldemort was gone for good.

This child was a saviour, even though Hagrid didn't know that yet. Alone as well, but that particular reality was set in stone long ago.

He stole one last glance at Lily as he wrapped Harry in the blanket from his cot, then closed the door and dared the trip back down the stairs.

…

The third in the trio was up to bat.

He was the last to arrive, the last to see James and Lily and Harry, the last one to uncover that terrible truth for himself.

He was asleep at that moment, but his time was near, for the second visitor- for a Sirius Black (the godfather, the Marauder) was coming.

He was coming.

(But first a moment of recollection) a bit of clarity if it isn't already possessed.

His girlfriend was dead. They buried her at seventeen years old after a midnight raid at Hogsmeade.

His best mate was a werewolf, in pain and alone. Too far away to help. Unaware that he was no longer in control, that Sirius wasn't Secret Keeper. No knowing that his friends were afraid and suspicious of him, of his motives, of his actions with the werewolf colony when so many people had already betrayed their friends and joined the Death Eaters.

Peter was (or so he thought) still a rat back in his hole. Still the last to be picked, fourth Marauder, last to the roll call.

His father was dead, his brother a Death Eater, a dead traitor. His mother told him once that she wished he was dead too.

He ran away when he was sixteen, to the Potter's.

(But remember Charlus and Dorea are already gone too.)

Lily and James have been under the Fidelius for a week; and he spent a good three quarters of it pissed out of his mind.

Our Sirius is alone.

Our Sirius is almost dead.

His world was crumbling in on him.

But listen and be still, dear friend- there was a sudden crack, says I.

Too late. The boy is here.

...

Sirius felt like death.

He looked like it too, by the sight of his reflection in the puddle he was lying on. His eyes were sunken, his clothes stained with beer and stale laughter, bright red lipstick lingered under his collar, lips from a nameless Muggle with a faceless complexion, so ridiculously far from the fire-spirited Scottish witch he had once loved that he had laughed in his ignorance, in the feeling of freedom that came at the bottom of a bottle.

He woke up in his measly flat at half-past one that morning, piss drunk sleeping on the lino. His face was indented from the grout and coated with dust, knocked out cold from a combination of Muggle spirits, Firewhiskey and the thought that he wasn't capable to be Secret Keeper to his best mate and his wife; to his godson because he was too close to them.

So what could he do? The full moon was scheduled for the night before last, Remus was obviously not an option, he swore that he couldn't take care of him, of Harry if they died.

He was still a werewolf, Pads. He wasn't ever meant to be a father.

(He wasn't the godfather, after all) he had said; and that Sirius should.

They all voted for him, pre-Fidelius, they hovered like crows, red eyed even at seven at night with barely touched Firewhiskey. The four of them who had been mates for years doubted their friends at the height of the war when they still had everything to lose.

Lily and James were married now, there was even a child. They weren't seventeen anymore with no responsibilities and no worries. People were dying, friends, family, people were falling in hordes. The murders of the entire Bones family was enough to somber even Pettigrew, but not Sirius, not Padfoot. Not the man who had lost so much already.

He had very little to lose (in his mind, at least), he wasn't James Potter, wasn't his son. He didn't have a warrant over his head like they did.

He didn't even have Marlene. He had lost her too.

He had faced the war like he had the rest of his life- separate from him, not harmful or particularly dangerous. To him, everything was a joke because he was scared shitless and couldn't process his fear. He couldn't articulate his terror- so instead of facing it, he drank and slept around, partied in the rare moments he wasn't on missions from the Order. He had already lost it all, in his mind there was nothing else he could lose.

Sirius still believed that his friends were safe.

He thought that they were untouchable.

But the rest of them didn't- the Marauders and Lily. They all told him to step up, (grow up- Sirius) our baby might die.

So he took one and gave the other away on that day when that was an option. Took on the role of godfather, but passed the torch to Pettigrew as Secret Keeper on the rare night when Lupin was away, on a secret mission from Dumbledore.

In their haste and fear, they doubted him, doubted Remus. Mistook his actions for cowardice and deception and excluded him from their lives.

They chose Peter instead. Actually, Sirius did.

"They won't think of him," he had told James, "I'm too close to you- they'd figure it out in a heartbeat. No one would guess you'd made Pettigrew Secret Keeper."

Peter was shaking when they cast the charm, when he repeated the words back to them, word for word, a week later. Remus was unaccounted for, unaware there was a meeting in the first place.

"Long live the reckless and the brave," James whispered, hand out, eyes tight. Seven words, seven pieces of history they created together when they were fourteen.

"Long live the reckless and the brave," Peter said, words clipped, head down.

(Bet you didn't know your best mate was a Death Eater. Bet you didn't know that there was a wolf even here amongst the sheep.)

You let the murderer in, Sirius. The Judas Iscariot of that day and age is in your midst.

But the rat said those words anyways. The Marauder honour, the inside joke they always said to each other.

Long live the reckless and the brave.

There were seven words.

And in that room, four friends.

In a single week, two would be dead, one a traitor and one in jail- leaving Lupin behind to bury the bodies and hold the memories. To walk the land of the living with not a friend in the world.

…

But that day in the early hours of November 2nd, Sirius was awake.

He had woken up with his wand in his fist (to hell with his Muggle landlady), lying in a wet threshold and open door. Woke up. He had slept in an open doorway for six hours.

(What have you come to, Padfoot? The world wasn't over yet, not for him. He didn't know that his best friend's were dead. He didn't know that Peter was a traitor. He had no idea of what had really happened, he was only worried about himself.)

He rolled over to the cupboard, threw a boot (with a drunken shaking hand) at the door, hitting it hard enough for the lock to click. Reached with the agility and strength of a Chaser to the counter, to his knees, to his feet.

He cradled his beating head and shaking hands together, an effort to somehow lessen the dull glow of red-hot light behind his eyes. He then reached for his watch and looked at the luminescent glow with squinting eyes. Saw the hands and numbers present him with a disappointing quarter to two.

He misread, blinked his sleep heavy eyes and moved the hands in his mind. Half past midnight. November 2nd, 1981.

Lily and James had been AWOL for eight days.

He had been alone for six.

He had spent most of it partying, drinking, smoking whatever joint was offered to him. He had kissed too many Muggle girls to count; slept with more than he should of. He had laughed when they kicked him out of one bar after another, sometimes three in one night. He had hidden behind rubbish bins in an alley for hours after the Death Eater's invaded the pub and killed as many Muggles as they could.

And even though he failed, he tried to pass off his crippling fear as just nerves.

He was still a boy, still a Marauder with no sense of reality. Still seventeen with the feeling of freedom in his lungs.

There was no room for another madman in this mess of a reality.

He was terrified.

No, he was alone- and in his solitude he found himself abandoned. Worse than left behind, worse than being left out to dry.

His best friends were in hiding. Remus was due to transform yesterday.

He was a sobbing heartbroken mess and he_ just couldn't handle it._

The pain was too much. No amount of Firewhiskey could dull the rolling list of dead friends in his mind.

It was a nightmare when he was awake and there was no peace in sleeping.

There was no calm, no sleep and no rest.

Not there, not in the mind of Sirius Black.

He was a diamond. And diamonds don't break. Not under pressure, not under stress. He was the rock that remained when James cried and Remus screamed and Peter begged him for his father to come back.

He was the solid one. He wasn't one to break.

But he did that day.

He did on the night after Lily and James were already gone and the day he would find the truth out for himself. Find the real reason behind it all.

He looked to his hands and watched them shake, watched his nerves tremble and his heart clench.

He stared at the floor and slid like a raindrop down the wall, the weight of responsibility crushing him on all sides.

…

Once he had had his third glass of water, Sirius realized something.

Peter was missing.

He had meant to check up on his friend on Wednesday, but he had forgotten. He was supposed to give a status report everyday- he hadn't heard anything in more than a week.

Terror ran through him as he grabbed the keys to his motorbike and his wand. He didn't notice that he left the flat the same way he had earlier- door open, hanging on its hinges like a dead man.

...

He was gone in minutes.

He took the bike, revving the engine more than he should have, took off into the skies with anger in his eyes. He flew through the clouds to disguise himself but forgot to decelerate and lower his altitude once he reached a certain distance. A thick grey mist of freezing water hit him in the space, instantly soaking him, clearing his head like the hangover potion never did. He glared at the ground, looking for Peter, for his soon-to-be ex-best friends flat amongst the Muggle townhouses and cul-de-sacs.

He flew over London, and reached a clearing free of trees. In the centre was a park, the only place dark enough to hide the bike. He remembered what James had told him, that Peter had put the strongest anti-Muggle charms he knew on the whole area, thick wards to protect him from everyone but himself. Sirius didn't care that he was scared too, he was missing.

He couldn't hide as a Muggle, pass off as a scared shitless Squib for much longer. He was a fugitive, he was on the run.

That rat was running for higher ground, for safer friends in a land where nobody knew him.

Sirius knew this all too well, he had seen it before. He had known Peter to run, to flee once the vice got too tight. He already knew that he was the worst choice for a Secret Keeper.

…

Sirius heaved himself over the threshold, into the dingy one-roomed flat with all the gave he could manage. There was no sign of a fight (closed cupboards, neat furniture, folded tea towels) but no sign of Peter either. The ship was sinking, the rats running to safety and higher ground.

Sirius screamed and threw a chair across the room, shattering a china cabinet and half the panes from the window. He looked in every room and under every hole. He searched the entire flat for a man and a rat, for the one-in-the same Marauder who had abandoned his post and forfeited his honour and betrayed his friends.

He ran back to his motorbike and flew straight to Godric's Hollow.

...

Sirius pulled up in haste, slammed into the front garden with the motor still running and ran up the walk.

His heart stopped as he saw the door. Sirius broke out in a sprint because it should've been invisible, the house should've been missing. Peter had broken his oath, the Fidelius Charm was _gone._

He was at the door in seconds. He slammed his heaving and sweaty body over the porch and passed the door, knocked it off its hinges.

The world tipped on its axis then, the sky could've fallen but he tripped anyways, blamed it on the broken porch. Perhaps it was for good measure that he saw this broken reality with one eye closed.

The hallway was eerie, like a house broken into but nothing of value was touched. The bottom floor was the same as it always had been, Dorea's furniture and Lily's dads chair sitting like dead parents in the sitting room. Lily's knitting sat on the table and James' broom was hung in the closet, his leather jacket hanging off a dining room chair. Two wands, two abandoned wands- lay on the sofa. Sirius stumbled over the rug and grabbed hold of the back of a kitchen chair until he could regain his breath.

He didn't take it as simply as Snape did.

He didn't see the house as a mission, he saw it as a graveyard. No one should have been able to stand where he stood. The laws of the Fidelius were clear.

Sirius felt his mouth dry as pushed off of the chair back, making the only noise these walls have heard since Avada Kedavra nearly twenty-four hours before.

He felt the wood creak, the stairs weep. He nearly stepped on the corpse before he realized that it was his best friend who lied beneath him.

His eyes were glassy, his glasses crushed and in pieces. The worst expression of determination mixed with fear was painted onto his cheekbones, clenched hands, firm eyebrows. He had lived on his feet, James Potter would never have died on his knees.

"James, oh Prongs…," he moaned. James Potter, good as his brother, better than a best friend, retired Chaser, newly engaged, just married- a father, a father, a baby without his father…

Sirius Reparo-d his glasses, put them back on his nose. He can't see without them, James had had them since he was four.

He's good as well blind- Lily always said so.

"There you are, Prongs," he whispered as tears slipped down his nose, "that's better isn't it?"

James was wearing Muggle clothes; smoking and charred, his body was tense in death. His eyes were open, hazel and glassy with a look of pure terror drawn on every surface. Sirius tripped over a picture frame and landed at his feet, wondering why, why, (why) he wasn't blinking, breathing, looking his way. He was his best friend in the world. Why was James ignoring him?

But Sirius wasn't mistaken- James finally caught hold of the Gravestone Disease after all these years. He was dead.

Sirius collapsed on top of his best mates body, buried his face in his chest and howled.

…

Hagrid ran into Sirius quite literally in his attempt to escape that house.

Sirius had left the door open, his wand was held tightly in his hand. He was crying and shaking, his face too worn for twenty one. But Hagrid understood better than most, because for Sirius this was the end of the world. James Potter was _dead._

But Sirius looked up, and in Hagrid's arms he saw him- Harry was alive.

He was crying his eyes out, his cream blanket shaking as he cried. A bleeding cut marked his forehead, and Sirius looked like a wild man in the presence of his godson, his eyes wide open, unshaven, smelling of Firewhiskey and Muggle spirits. He looked down at the child and made a mad grasp for him, for Harry, but Hagrid dodged at the last second.

"He-he needs to go to Dumbledore," Hagrid said quietly. "to Lily's sisters house, he'll be safe there."

"He'll be safe with me, Hagrid- I'm his godfather!" Sirius said madly, his eyes wild. "Give him to me, I'm the only person he has left."

"I can't, Sirius. Yeh know that,"

"Please, Hagrid, I can take care of him. I need him, James-James is _dead_, do you know that his father is dead? I'm his godfather, Hagrid, please!"

"Sirius, don' make me do this. Yeh have to know tha' I don't want to neither,"

"Please," Sirius begged, tears falling in torrents down his face. "Please, he's all I have. James would've wanted me to."

"He's an orphan, Sirius. He needs to go to Dumbledore."

"No," Sirius moaned, clutching the back of a kitchen chair as his knee collapsed. "Hagrid, are-are they really dead?"

Hagrid looked behind him with outrageous concern in his eyes, tightly shut his eyes and nodded; once, twice. Yes, they were dead, Lily and James, his best friends in the world were dead. Harry was an orphan, just like him.

"Give him to me, at least let me say goodbye."

Hagrid passed Sirius the bundle of blankets, and his cries quieted down immediately. Harry looked up with red eyes at his godfather, at the man he loved and knew that he was safe in his arms.

Sirius grabbed for Harry's finger and kissed his forehead.

Sirius shut his eyes as fat, hot tears ran down his cheeks. He stood in shock in the hallway, halfway in-between the bodies of his two best friends (standing like a statue with a child in his arms at the top of the stairs.)

You could say it was kind, but we both know better. If life was kind, James' wouldn't have been cut so short. If everything had worked out Sirius wouldn't have had to pry his heart off the sidewalk when realization came two minutes too late.

He wouldn't have had to try and keep Harry's eyes on him and not on the dead people on the floor.

Try to convince an orphan that his parents were only sleeping.

And surely,

...Surely

They would wake up soon.

But he waited. Sirius gave himself five minutes to lose his best friend in the world.

(the only family he had left.)

Five minutes to fall to pieces.

And he did.

With a baby to his chest and his heart in his throat and a friend (a brother) lying dead without a wand in his hand.

He was saying goodbye. Not for good, he hoped. But even then, Sirius knew that this would be the last time he would see Harry Potter for a long time.

"Take care of him, Hagrid," Sirius sobbed, "take care of my godson."

"I will."

What else could he have said?

What could Hagrid have done to reassure the boy? His best friend's were dead- his godson was being taken away from him. For now, for the first time in his life- Sirius Black truly had nothing left in this world- he had nothing left to lose.

…

Sirius gave his motorbike to Hagrid after it happened. (the one he and James had fixed together. The one he had bought to impress those Muggle birds his mother hated.)

Why would he need it when his right-hand-man was gone?

Now even Harry was leaving him.

_Let me take him,_ Sirius had begged him. _Let me take him, Hagrid, James and Lily would've wanted me to. _

But he said no, and Sirius walked away.

Forgetting that he had his own appointment with Death soon enough

Forgetting that his own life was over and that avenging James and Lily's murders would be the only good thing that could come out of that night.

So on that night at Godric's Hollow thirty-four years ago, Sirius left that house full of dead friends and living godson's for Pettigrew- for that rat who wouldn't be on the run for much longer- with any hope, he would be dead before he could see the dawn.

...

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